‘Tis The Season: Authors Talk Holidays is a special seasonal feature on Pop! Goes The Reader in which some of my favourite authors help me to celebrate the spirit of the season and spread a little holiday cheer. So, pour yourself a cup of hot chocolate and snuggle in by the fireside as they answer the question: “What does the holiday season mean to you?”
About Wendy Loggia
Wendy Loggia is a book editor and author of books for tweens and teens, her most recent being the YA romcom, All I Want For Christmas. She loves the glow of holiday lights in the snow, and all the traditions of the holiday season, including hiding a teeny-tiny Christmas pickle ornament on her tree. She graduated from SUNY at Buffalo with a BA in English and Social Sciences Interdisciplinary – International Studies, and has an MA in British and American Literature from Hunter College. Before moving to New York City to work in publishing, she worked at an indie bookstore, a large national chain, and a bookstore smack in the middle of Piccadilly Circus in London. She lives with her family in New Jersey.
I love Christmas. Everything about it — from the holiday music on the radio to the festive decorations going up around town to the hustle and bustle of last-minute shopping — every bit of it makes me happy. Growing up, my parents and I would make the 90-minute drive through the snowy Pennsylvania woods to spend Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle’s house with my older cousins, their spouses, and their families. Each year the tree seemed to get bigger, the tinsel shinier, presents flowing out from under it, and our family hugging and laughing as we ate and caught up on everyone’s news. There was always a smorgasbord – a Swedish Christmas buffet (I’m Italian by marriage, Swedish by birth!)…but who could eat korv, potatoes au gratin, pickled herring, limpa rye, lingonberries, Bond-ost cheese with caraway seeds, and rice pudding with all those presents begging to be opened? After we unwrapped gifts — always done on Christmas Eve – my uncles and cousins would do the dishes and sing (loudly and off-key, but that was the point). Later, after pie, we’d attend a candlelight church service at midnight. One year it snowed so hard we couldn’t get up the small country road my aunt and uncle lived on — we had to park our cars at the bottom and walk home, snow falling so heavily that we could barely see one another through our snowflake-laden eyelashes.
One of my favorite moments with my family is decorating our Christmas tree. For many years we chopped down our own tree — there’s nothing like the feeling of wandering around the Christmas tree farm and finally spotting “the one,” sawing it down, getting it bagged and loaded on the car roof, and driving home listening to carols – and you can’t beat the smell of fresh pine. But then I caved — real trees shed a lot of needles, even if you are diligent with water – and it’s hard to put up a real tree in November and keep it going until January. So, we went the artificial route…and we haven’t gone back. Now, we put up two trees — one with sentimental family ornaments and one that’s more themey (and I’m seriously considering a third this year — I know it’s extra but…it’s Christmas! The most extra holiday there is.) Decorating our main tree is an Event. There are mugs of hot chocolate made the old-fashioned way, with milk and real chocolate. It’s A Wonderful Life is on the TV — George saving his brother Harry from drowning, dancing the Charleston over the pool with Mary, and meeting Clarence — my favorite holiday movie is the comforting background noise to our tree-trimming. And the real stars of the show, the boxes upon boxes of ornaments that we open and exclaim over like seeing long lost friends.
Everyone knows which ornaments are “family” ornaments that anyone is allowed to hang on the tree, which ones go in pairs (Mr. and Mrs. Claus, Mickey and Minnie, little bakers from Hershey Park, the trio of pipe cleaner angels) and which ones are the provenance of a specific person. I have so many favorites — a tiny red Hallmark heart my husband gave me when we were engaged that opens to reveal a family decorating a tree, vintage Shiny Brites, colored-paper ornaments made by my children, ornaments we’ve collected on our travels, a blue glass ball with red glitter that says WENDY that I received from Santa in kindergarten, the elf that my grandmother bought for me from the hospital gift shop when I was a toddler and she lay in a hospital bed too ill to ever come home. Each ornament tells a story – of Christmases past, of Christmas cheer, and of Christmas hope.
I had so much fun writing All I Want For Christmas, a merry and bright hug of a novel about a girl who loves the Christmas season (write what you know, as they say!), and so many of my experiences, favorite Christmassy things, and family traditions are woven into the book. One of the most popular elements seems to be…the cookies! Frosted holiday sugar cookies with burnt edges, peanut butter blossoms with a soft peanuty base and a Hershey’s kiss slightly melted in the middle, buttery Spritz cookies shaped into wreaths — all of them say Christmastime to me. There’s nothing better than sitting down with a plate of homemade cookies and a cup of coffee at my kitchen table to work on our annual Christmas puzzle – another tradition! Each year we get a new holiday-themed puzzle. Friends and family visitors are welcome to work on it — and by “welcome” I mean strong-armed as the puzzle must be done by Christmas, so it’s all hands on deck! This year we’ve got our work cut out for us.
This recipe for Spritz is included in All I Want For Christmas. Not only does it make dozens of the perfect bite-sized cookie, the recipe was my mom’s and everyone knows family recipes are the best kinds of recipes. She gave me a cookie press many years ago, tucking her beautifully handwritten recipe inside — one that said, at the end, as all her recipes did, Enjoy!
Mom’s Spritz Cookies
Ingredients
2 sticks salted butter, room temperature
½ cup sugar
½ tsp. almond extract
½ tsp. vanilla
1 egg yolk
2 cups flour
* you need a cookie press: it presses your dough into different shapes using discs
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar together thoroughly. Add the almond and vanilla extracts, egg yolk, and flour. Mix with clean hands and roll into a log for the cookie press. You can fit about 28 cookies on an ungreased sheet. Bake for 9-10 minutes or until very lightly browned. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack.
Wishing all of you a healthy and happy holiday season, and a new year ahead that is bright with promise. Enjoy!
Title All I Want For Christmas
Author Wendy Loggia
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Publication Date November 3rd 2020 by Underlined
Find It On Underlined ● Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● The Book Depository ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
A sweet Christmas romance about a girl with one wish: to kiss someone under the mistletoe. The holiday escape you need!
Bailey Briggs is counting down the days to Christmas: she lives for holiday music, baking cookies, going on snowy sleigh rides, and wearing her light-up reindeer ears to work at Winslow’s bookstore. But all she really wants this year is the one thing she doesn’t have: someone special to kiss under the mistletoe. And she’s 100 percent certain that that someone isn’t Jacob Marley – athlete, player, and of questionable taste in girlfriends – and that Charlie, the mysterious stranger with the British accent, is the romantic lead of her dreams. Is she right? This will be a December to remember, filled with real-life Christmas magic…and, if she stays on Santa’s nice list, a wish that just might come true.
